This year marks the 50th year since I first walked into a classroom as a teacher. Back then, I was a day school teenager looking to make some extra money and got a job teaching in a supplementary Sunday school that catered to students who would mostly drop out after their bar or bat mitzvah. How hard could this job be? I was quickly disabused of the notion that this was going to be a walk in the park and the thing that was most challenging for me at the time was the unstated question of most of those young people of “Why should it matter to me?”
I admit that the question resonated with me because of my own experience as a student, exposed for years to traditional texts that seldom spoke to me. (Indeed, the first step for any attempts to change teaching must begin with an exploration of the inner life of the teacher, who is supposed to affect that change.) When I finally got to teaching in a day school, texts were of course the focal point of all classes. The assumption seemed to be that the texts carried with them their own authority and, with that, their own relevance. This is what authentic Jews study. This is what Jews do. This is what Jews believe. That alone was their justification for our attention and our commitment. My students, however, did not always seem to share that assumption. To be sure, there were many who did, who grew by leaps and bounds because the text spoke to them even if just by virtue of its demand for submission. But there were many others for whom that was not enough. And so, whether it was in using Kohlbergian moral dilemmas or the editorials of the New York Times or lyrics of famous pop stars or essays by Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik, we sought to make our teaching relevant to students’ lives by drawing from the world around them – though seldom was there talk about God.
In this teaching, there was often a dichotomy between the goal of relevance and the text itself, and different teachers tended to favor one side over the other. There were the dynamic, charismatic teachers for whom the text was often but a pretext for trying to appeal to student interests, and there were those who thought that if we could just keep teaching the texts themselves, then students would see why Judaism should matter to them. The sole assessment for this goal was often a single question on the final knowledge-based exam something akin to “what do you think the relevance of this is to our own day?” And still, there was seldom talk about God, or at least the student’s personal relationship with God.
Now, years later, I find I have morphed once more, just as the world has. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks z”l refers to the cultural climate change that the world is undergoing, reduced in his words from the “us” to the “I,” from the community to the self. That may explain the intensification of the search for spirituality in the world, even at the expense of fidelity to religious institutions. And our kids are no different – they naturally crave meaning as a part of their human development, all the more so in a world in which the adults are also searching for meaning and connection.
Now, more than ever, it seems to me, there is a need to help students find their personal connection to the Torah they are learning, to find themselves but within the context of tradition and community.
This requires a shift in pedagogy. It represents an opportunity not to give up on authentic text learning, with all of its depth, breadth and rigor, but rather to add a layer that helps students discern how they might incorporate that learning into their lives, to become perhaps what Rabbi A.J. Heschel referred to as “text people,” or what Rav Soloveitchik referred to not as a life immersed in prayer but rather living a prayerful life. In this regard, talk about God should be unavoidable.
For teachers, this is more challenging than one might think. Few among us were trained to teach meaning, to help students make their own personal meaning without us imposing our own, or to talk about our own feelings, experiences or relationship with God, or how to help students nurture their own. But in the 50 years since I entered the field, I am now in a place where I am much more confident in my resolve to help them find their own answers to the question of “why should it matter?” In the process, I help them not only find their own voice, but my own.
For an exploration of how this meaning-making might be done, please see this article by Rabbi Goldmintz in the Winter 2021 issue of Jewish Education Leadership.